The moment we’ve all been waiting for….

We had a baby.

A baby girl!

Hannah Michelle weighed in at 9 pounds, 2 ounces. Whew!

It makes me laugh a little, because for the better part of my pregnancy I was completely convinced we were having a girl. Then for the last 10-15 weeks (and especially the last 4-6 weeks) I thought for sure we were having a boy. But God knows what this family needs, and we need another beautiful wonderful daughter to raise, love and train.

Here is Hannah’s birth story for all you who are interested:

On Sunday, the 14th, my water broke around 7 pm. Like with Julia, it was a release over time, rather than one large gush. Around 8 pm I started having contractions that were about 10 – 15 minutes apart. By 10:30 I started walking the cul-de-sac with my mom and my contractions were coming every 4 minutes. They weren’t too bad, I could still walk through them, but had to stop talking. This lasted till 11:30, when Jonathan started getting ready for us to leave for the hospital. We arrived at the hospital a little after midnight. By this point my contractions had slowed down significantly, coming every 20 minutes or later. The nurse hooked me up to a machine to monitor my contractions and Hannah’s heart beat. During this time, the midwife, Lynne, came to check up on me. She expressed concerned, first, because Hannah’s heart beat has bouncing (almost literally) between 90 and 190, second, my contractions were slowly down more and more, and third, I had only dilated to 4 cm and barely effaced. At hearing this I got really upset, because it meant I still had so far to go. We made the decision to start pitocin to “kick start” the process. Again, I was feeling pretty emotional about how things were swerving farther from my original birth plan/idea and was nervous that taking pitocin would lead to other medicinal interventions. Thankfully, once I got the pitocin the contractions started coming regularly and were getting intense. I was able to use the tub to labor for a little while, helping to ease my muscles. Once I felt the need to push, I got out of the tub and got into the bed. I had some pretty severe back labor pains, so my mom and Jonathan would take turns pressing on my back during contractions. I tried “resting” between contractions but they seemed to be piggy backing making it nearly impossible to really ever relax. Just after 4 am, Lynne gave me the go to start pushing. I pushed for about 15-20 minutes and Hannah was born at 4:21. I must say, pushing was far more painful with Hannah than Julia. It could be because she is bigger, or pushing went much faster, but I clearly remember thinking “I am never having another kid”. Yeah, we’ll see about that. 😉

I will admit that things didn’t go as I had thought they would; I assumed that from start to finish would have been shorter, that I wouldn’t need any type of medicinal intervention and that I’d some how be more “ready”. But on the other side, since Hannah was born things are going better than I hoped. She’s latching on really well, has so far been very content and Julia seems to really love her.

God has been such a wonderful provider! I can’t begin to explain how blessed I am to be the mother of two beautiful wonderful little girls. 

Hannah Michelle 6/15/2009

Julia Mabel 11/23/2007